Sen. Rand Paul won the 2013 Washington Times-CPAC presidential preference straw poll Saturday, and Sen. Marco Rubio was a close second, easily outdistancing the rest of the field and signaling the rise of a new generation of conservative leaders who will take the Republican Party into the 2016 election.

Mr. Paul won 25 percent of the vote, and Mr. Rubio collected 23 percent. Former Sen. Rick Santorum was third with just 8 percent, New JerseyGov. Chris Christie  who was not invited to speak at the three-day Conservative Political Action Conference  was next with 7 percent, and Rep. Paul D. Ryan, the GOPs vice presidential nominee last year, was fifth with 6 percent.

I hope Rand, Rubio, Palin, Cruz and any other conservatives understand that they need to remain alert ,and be leery of the other democrat party (known as "republicans")- Who will be trying EVERYTHING/Every dirty trick in the book, to make sure that they are NOT nominated in 2016.

I hope they are thinking about how they are going to handle the boat load of BS that's about to be unleashed on them.

Looks like Christy/Bush or Bush/Christy is the chosen ticket for the 2016 Gee-we-don't-know-why-we-lost-again election loss.

Why go for half measures?

McCain/Romney for 2016.

Or McCain/ Christy 2016

Of course the question for conservative candidates is- What are you going to do when you figure out that the party you belong to has no intention of EVER letting you run?

102
posted on 03/16/2013 10:05:53 PM PDT
by Pajamajan
(Pray for our nation. Thank the Lord for everything you have. Don't wait. Do it today.)

A Ted Cruz/Tom McClintock ticket for ‘16 POTUS would be good, but there are plenty of candidate possibilities from other people who are true conservatives. I, also, like Senator Rand Paul, except for his Libertarian positions on most foreign policy issues-Rand’s major weakness, IMHO. Unfortunately, too many of the other possibilities for ‘16 GOP POTUS practice RINO Republicanism. I curious as to how many CPAC attendees who voted the way that they did knew which of the candidates are for amnesty for illegal immigrants as well as which of the candidates are not for amnesty for illegal immigrants.

103
posted on 03/16/2013 10:16:26 PM PDT
by johnthebaptistmoore
(The world continues to be stuck in a "all leftist, all of the time" funk. BUNK THE FUNK!)

That article you keep posting about Rand Paul is totaly false. Notice that there is not a single quote that matches the outrageous headline. His position on gay marriage is that marriage should be between a man and a woman but it should be removed from the tax code. I don’t know how you can then jump to the conclusion that he is in favor of gay marriage. Your source is just not reliable. The article is hit piece.

He was virtually tied by Marco Rubio. Then add in all the votes for someone OTHER than Rand Paul, or Rubio for that matter, and you have the truth, instead of fuzzy math. To say he was chosen by them is not mathematically true. He barely edged out another, and the two of them got less than half the votes. Math. Do the math.

Ted Cruz could speak well till he is blue in the face. But the communists who currently run this country and their useful idiots in the MSM will not allow this CANADIAN BORN conservative run for president because of his birthplace. Meanwhile our _resident is a Kenyan born, Indonesia bred MARXIST ALIEN!

112
posted on 03/17/2013 4:52:15 AM PDT
by Vaquero
(Don't pick a fight with an old guy. If he is too old to fight, he'll just kill you.)

There’s plenty available from Ted Cruz himself about eligibility and natural born. What Hannity says about it isn’t as telling to me as what the man himself says. You could always post a link to what Cruz says about it. I would, but that would enable all those posting their self-made conclusions to be lazy lay-abouts.

The gulf between the Republican Party (GOPe) and actual conservative American voters continues to widen at an accelerated pace. The General Election of 2010 were the first in this generation where a significant number of conservative voters (formerly inclined to vote Republican) refused to play along and vote just R regardless.(Oh, what the hey!)

Just like many Democrat Party supporters are locked into ignorance and denial, so are GOPe (Republican Party) supporters. Just different degrees and kinds of ignorance.

All Rand Paul needs to do for me to get on board is to declare in front of God and everybody, that the department of Education will be dissolved, and that parents must feed their own kids. Everything else will fall into place after that.

The pendulum always swings eventually and one of the few things that can be counted on is that the young will rebel. The greatest danger to the collectivist crap message coming from Obama and crew is that it is now the “conventional wisdom” and the very young may be starting to realize that it is not wisdom of any kind,it is recycling the same old garbage that never works.

130
posted on 03/17/2013 12:15:09 PM PDT
by RipSawyer
(I was born on Earth, what planet is this?)

If Cruz runs he will win the nomination. I’ve been saying that since before he even beat out Dewhurst for the Republican nomination in his Senate run. The man is just an unbelievably good speaker as well as having a vast knowledge of the Constitution.

Anyone saying he is ineligible is a kook and doesn’t know jack about the law. The same people saying he is ineligible were the same people saying McCain was ineligible.

"Rubio is an ethnic-pandering amnesty promoter. Why would you want him?"

I'm not sure he reaches that threshold (reference please). He speaks very well of LIBERTY which is sorely lacking in today's elected officials, but regardless, he's not a Natural Born Citizen. So it's a moot point.

139
posted on 03/17/2013 9:31:33 PM PDT
by uncommonsense
(Conservatives believe what they see; Liberals see what they believe.)

In 2008, Rubio blocked a number of patriotic immigration bills in the Florida legislature. The Miami Herald reported:

“Florida lawmakers looking to pass bills targeted at curbing illegal immigration faced one major hurdle this sessionconvincing South Florida legislators, who hold key leadership positions in the House and Senate, to support their cause. Without the backing of House Speaker Marco Rubio, the first Cuban-American to hold the position, the bills failed to get any major play in their committees. Six weeks into the session, a three-hour workshop was held on the six House bills, but even that failed to produce its desired intent of combining the bills into one larger committee bill.

“’Speaker Rubio outlined the priorities of the session and this didn’t fall under that list,’ said [Rep. David] Rivera, one of Rubio’s lieutenants.”

When Arizona enacted SB 1070, Rubio wrote:

“Arizona’s policy shows the difficulty and limitations of states trying to act piecemeal to solve what is a serious federal problem I think aspects of the law, especially that dealing with ‘reasonable suspicion,’ are going to put our law enforcement officers in an incredibly difficult position. It could also unreasonably single out people who are here legally, including many American citizens.”

Rubio eventually flip-floppedafter the conservative grassroots embraced Arizona. But he still made sure to qualify that we need “a legal immigration system that works” (a.k.a. more legal immigration) and that we must “Understand that what Arizona is facing is different from anything Florida has ever faced... Frankly, very few states in the country can imagine what that’s like.” (i.e. no other state should consider enacting a similar bill.

"Florida lawmakers looking to pass bills targeted at curbing illegal immigration faced one major hurdle this sessionconvincing South Florida legislators, who hold key leadership positions in the House and Senate, to support their cause. Without the backing of House Speaker Marco Rubio, the first Cuban-American to hold the position, the bills failed to get any major play in their committees. "

OK. Point well taken. That's not good. McLame had the same problem - not wanting to close the doors before revamping immigration.

Thanks for the info!!!!

142
posted on 03/17/2013 10:00:29 PM PDT
by uncommonsense
(Conservatives believe what they see; Liberals see what they believe.)

Keeping my eye on Rand Paul. He did vote for Kerry and Hagel...reason being he believed he could block Brennan with his filibuster. I never did grasp the logic as all 3 have been confirmed.
Was it all a show and an attempt to set the table for a presidential run?

Has he learned from father and got more polished but has the same whacky views or is he a libertarian posing as a republican?

I guess time will tell but I heard him taling about homosexual amrriage and that got the liberal happy, heard a little about illegals and then while thinking he would vote for Kerry and Hagel he could block Brennan it just was a side show in the end.

Like I said time will tell and we’ll see if he has the same nutty views as his dad.

I said a long time ago, that Ted Cruz comes across as Marco Rubio on steroids, or a totally unvarnished version of Rubio-—before Cruz came along, I’m sure a lot of us were pushing ourselves to embrace Rubio, on little real evidence, wanting to believe he was tougher than he really was: then along came Cruz, who actually fulfilled that “fantasy”.

Whatever other reasons Cruz might have only got 4% (and Paul and Rubio “won” with a total of nearly half the vote in a field of dozens) , I think the main one is that there’s
a kind of collective turning away from Cruz as being too
abrasive and too confident in that abrasiveness: here is where the “NEW” face of the GOP-e asserts itself: Cruz is not the face that they want to present to the American public.
They accept him provisionally as a hitman, but not as a figurehead/candidate.

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